Sly Stone At Coachella

The sad, drawn-out story of Sly Stone continues, once again in the public eye. You can read all about the latest "concert" disaster at the Coachella Festival if you want via AudioFile or Pop & Hiss. Or you can simply realize how prescient author Greil Marcus was all the way back in 1975, when he wrote about the the artist in the aftermath of the groundbreaking There's A Riot Goin' On in "Sly Stone: The Myth of Staggerlee" (an essay that was part of his fine collection titled Mystery Train):

Sly clearly could not push Riot much farther, not without releasing a whole album of silence; and not, perhaps, without losing the audience he had worked to win. Fresh, the album that did follow, in 1973, showed Sly clicking his heels for Richard Avedon's camera, and the songs did their best to keep up with the title and the cover. "There's a mickie in the tastin' of disaster," was the first line of Fresh --- Sly's instinctive phrase of Nietzche's belief that he who gazes into the abyss will find the abyss looking back; that he who looks too long at monsters may well become one.

TNOP prefers to dwell on the massive influence that Sylvester Stewart has had on rock, soul and jazz. Here he is with The Family Stone on The Dick Cavett Show at the height of his musical powers back in 1971. So, take your places . . .